Thursday, August 26

today is my 25th birthday. i'll be spending this beautiful bluegrass day lounging by the pool and then later this evening celebrating with friends and family! tomorrow morning i'm headed to chicago to spend the weekend with some lovely ladies!! be back with a full report next week :)

Wednesday, August 25

Saturday morning after my slumber party we hit up Doodles for brunch. Ya'll in the Lexington area have got to get breakfast/brunch there....it is SO GOOD. I had the short stack and it was to die for! and of course some yummy mimosas!

Wednesday, August 18

I just finished Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks and loved it! Not sure if ya'll know this about me, but I'm obsessed with period films and the like. Pride & Prejudice anyone?! I swoon every time...

I wish someone would turn this book into a movie! The book is a fictional tale about one woman's survival of the Great Plague...Not to be confused with the Black Death, a previous pandemic of the Plague. I got really interested in the history behind the novel and spent a while doing research...very interesting (and scary)! If you like period pieces you should definitely read this book!

‘‘The plot is gripping, I like the psychological subtlety of characters struggling with a shifting world, and it’s packed with historical detail.”

—Daily Mail (UK)

"This novel is quite captivating, so rich with period effect that it makes a great candidate for a screen drama.”

—Weekend Australian

‘‘Year of Wonders is the moving story of a community, but it is also the account of a survivor, one of whose metal has indeed been tested and ‘refined’ through suffering, and one whose voice powerfully registers those changes, in ways that seem both recognizably historical and also uncannily modern.”

—Australian Book Review

“A vividly imagined and strangely consoling tale of hope in a time of despair.”

—O, The Oprah Magazine

“A former war correspondent, Brooks proves a gifted storyteller as she subtly reveals how ignorance, hatred and mistrust can be as deadly as any virus. Based in part on the true story of Eyam, a rural Debyshire village whose rector persuaded residents to voluntarily quarantine themselves during the plague, YEAR OF WONDERS is itself a wonder.”

—People Magazine

“With assured, elegant prose…Brooks keeps readers glued through starkly dramatic episodes and a haunting story of flawed, despairing human beings. This poignant and powerful account carries the pulsing beat of a sensitive imagination and the challenge of moral complexity.”

Monday, August 16

After seeing this project on "It's The Little Things" blog, I had been wanting to try it for some time...finally with the bar exam being over, I was able to get it done. Ben and I put up the board and batten - really this is faux, bc the real thing would have boards of wood up on the wall and the slats would be there to cover the seams - in two days. My can-do-anything dad made the L-shaped bench for us and it has some much needed storage inside.

We only put the board and batten on 2 walls (plus one teeny wall), because in our little condo the eating area is at the end of a galley style kitchen. I'm really please with how it turned out! Makes it more of a separate, defined area.

This was a fairly easy project. My dad has two table saws so we cut the wood ourselves, but if you didn't, you could totally have Home Depot or whoever make the cuts for you. I think we bought 16 1x2s, 1 1x3, and the L shaped moulding. All together it was a about a hundred and fifty dollars.

We hung the 1x3 with drywall screws at 56" from the base moulding. Then cut and nailed (with small finishing nails) the 1x2s about one foot apart from each other. There were two electrical sockets that we had to work around so we just fudged the distance between the slats to fit around those.

We initially tried putting the 1x2 slats up with liquidnails, but because the woods was often bowed, that didn't last long. Using two finishing nails in each slat worked well, and the nail holes were easy to cover. We did miter the edges which is kind of difficult because its tricky to figure out what cuts to make. Be careful!

After all the wood was on the walls we did quite a bit of caulking. Filling in the spaces between the slats and the wall and where the boards meet. Let that all dry and then got to work sanding. Ben did this. I am weak. Then all we had to do was prime and paint. We used semi-gloss bright white.

I don't know exactly how Dad made the bench because he delivered it already made. I think he basically built two boxes out of 2x4s and then covered them in MDF and added the base moulding.

The plain walls in the eating area before:

My handyman :) hard at work:

Before it was painted:

Close-up. This is before the screws were covered and the caulk was sanded:

And the end product w/ some antique Ironstone platters hung above (ignore the artwork sitting on the bench):

I am still going to add seat cushions to the bench. I haven't decided on a fabric yet...I'm a commitment phobe when it comes to fabrics!

I'm also going to hang a new light fixture. I'm thinking this super affordable light fixture from Lowes:

What do ya'll think?! We plan on staying here for a couple more years (we have to stay for 3 bc we got the first-time homebuyer tax credit) and then keeping it as a rental property... so I suppose we will just leave the bench and table here for the tenants.

Thursday, August 12

It's "work week" for the sororities at UK so I took some treats over to the girls at the Theta house. Rush starts Saturday so I suppose I'll drop some more sweets off next week sometime. As all you fellow greek girls know, rush is a LONG two weeks...treats are definitely needed!

I made these super easy dipped pretzel rods and put them in a galvanized bucket from Michael's.

All you need is some pretzel rods, candy coating bark in chocolate and vanilla and some sprinkles.

Melt the bark and dip the pretzels in the chocolate. Let cool and then melt the vanilla bark and drizzle over the dipped ends. Before the vanilla cools add the sprinkles.

That's all! Add some ribbon and you've got a cute little snack! And everyone loves them, there were like 3 left within a couple of minutes at the T-house...hungry sorority girls...

Tuesday, August 3

ME ME ME ME! & all the other loyal blackberry lovers out there....Next week the new Blackberry Torch comes out! Wooohooo! It has both a touchscreen and slide-out QWERTY keyboard. Also, the so-slow-almost-makes-me-want-an-iphone web browser has been updated. thank.goodness. Unfortunately, I just used my upgrade to replace my BB after a little accident...oops. But this baby will be mine ASAP!

From MSNBC.com: "The device will use RIM's new Operating System 6, which includes a badly needed re-do of the BlackBerry Web browser, which is painfully slow and frustrating to use. The new browser is called the Torch Mobile browser. It is based on WebKit, the same engine used by Apple and Google.

The phone, with Wi-Fi, has pinch-to-zoom on the touchscreen, something the iPhone and other devices already feature. It also has a 5-megapixel camera with flash and autofocus, as well as "environment" settings. The camera will name pictures by location."

So, are you a Blackberry user? I love my MacBook, but I'm all about the BB...